{"title":"Wanda Coleman","description":"\u003cp\u003eWanda Coleman's work offers a powerful exploration of urban life and culture, infused with raw emotion and striking imagery. Her writing delves into themes of resilience, identity, and the complexities of modern existence, making her a distinctive voice within \u003cem\u003eArts \u0026amp; Culture\u003c\/em\u003e literature.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThrough collections such as \u003cstrong\u003eHeart First into this Ruin\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003cstrong\u003eWicked Enchantment\u003c\/strong\u003e, readers encounter a bold and uncompromising style that challenges conventions and invites reflection on the human condition. Her poetry and prose resonate with a sharp intensity that captures the spirit of contemporary experience.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"heart-first-into-this-ruin-by-wanda-coleman-9781574232530","title":"Heart First into this Ruin","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\"Fantastically entertaining and deeply engaging... potent distillations of creative rage, social critique, and subversive wit.\"\u003c\/em\u003e -\u003cem\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\"Terrifying and fearlessly inventive.\"\u003c\/em\u003e -\u003cem\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe first complete collection of Wanda Coleman's original and inventive sonnets. Long regarded as among her finest work, these one hundred poems give voice to loving passions, social outrage, and hard-earned wisdom.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWanda Coleman was a beat-up, broke Black woman who wrote with anger, humour, and ruthless intelligence: \"to know, i must survive myself,\" she wrote in \"American Sonnet 7.\" A poet of the people, she created the experimental \"American Sonnet\" form and published them between 1986 and 2001. The form inspired countless others, from Terrance Hayes to Billy Collins.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDrawn from life's particulars, Coleman's art is timeless and universal. In \"American Sonnet 61\" she writes:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ereaching down into my griot bag\u003cbr\u003e of womanish wisdom and wily\u003cbr\u003e social commentary, i come up with bricks\u003cbr\u003e with which to either reconstruct\u003cbr\u003e the past or deconstruct a head....\u003cbr\u003e from the infinite alphabet of afroblues\u003cbr\u003e intertwinings, i cull apocalyptic visions\u003cbr\u003e (the details and lovers entirely real)\u003cbr\u003e and articulate my voyage beyond that\u003cbr\u003e point where self disappears\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThese one hundred sonnets—borne from influences as diverse as Huey P. Newton and Herman Melville, Amiri Baraka and Robert Duncan—tell Coleman's own tale, as well as the story of Black and white America. From \"American Sonnet 2\":\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003etowards the cruel attentions of violent opiates\u003cbr\u003e as towards the fatal fickleness of artistic rain\u003cbr\u003e towards the locusts of social impotence itself\u003cbr\u003e i see myself thrown heart first into this ruin\u003cbr\u003e not for any crime\u003cbr\u003e but being\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a collection of electrifying truth that only an artist such as Wanda Coleman can deliver.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47455583240428,"sku":"9781574232530","price":34.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/b19730e08502a9a091127a2a78f14924.jpg?v=1774817755"},{"product_id":"wicked-enchantment-by-wanda-coleman-9780141995830","title":"Wicked Enchantment","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA voice for justice, anti-racism, and equality - here is the greatest and most powerful work of the 'L. A. Blueswoman'.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the first ever UK publication of the poetry of Wanda Coleman—a beat-up, broke Black woman who wrote with anger, humour and clarity about her life on the margins, and who went overlooked by the establishment for much of her career even as she was known colloquially as the 'unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles'.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNobody wrote about police hassle like she did. Nobody wrote about poverty, about making do with what's on hand, about the slave trade or about their personal vendetta against slow walkers in the supermarket, in quite the same way. \u003cem\u003eWicked Enchantment\u003c\/em\u003e gathers 130 of Coleman's best poems, spanning some four decades, in a selection by Terrance Hayes. Mary Karr has called it 'hateful and hilarious, heartbroke and hellbent'; the Washington Post says that 'Wanda Coleman is not just wickedly wise, she is transcendent'; the New Yorker calls her 'one of the greatest poets ever to come out of L. A.'\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBrutal, hilarious, triumphant, wild and paradoxically, sometimes horrifically precise, these are not poems written for a course, for establishment approval or for polite applause; they were written because Coleman had to write what she saw and felt, and wrote brilliantly. Few if any writers, before or since, have had the courage to write with such honesty about the daily experience of life in a racist world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Penguin Random House NZ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47601358962924,"sku":"9780141995830","price":30.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/e660834cdea8719092834a6d5c0bbb3f.jpg?v=1778036657"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/collections\/wanda-coleman.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}